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Mary McKenna's posterous

ramblings of a constant roamer

Filed under: Brian Halligan

How do you successfully encourage members of your team to read?

Book_pic

Today’s blog is a question rather than a whole bunch of answers.  The photo is a snapshot of what was on the bookshelf in Learning Pool’s communal bathroom yesterday (bit of Ally McBeal-ism goes on at Pool Heights imagining the glamour of a fictional & quite eccentric Boston law firm whilst dealing with the reality of living as a fast growing Derry based online learning business).

My business partner & I are voracious readers of business & technology books...we buy them all the time at airports, when we’re hanging around in railway stations and the like.  We swap them with each other, circulate bits & pieces of them to others in our team & then we chuck them into the communal Learning Pool “library” where we hope others will also read them.

At the moment, I’ve got Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” on the go as well as Richard Koch’s "80/20 Principle"; Paul’s reading Guy Kawasaki’s “Enchantment” and something by those bright guys at Hubspot on “Inbound Marketing”.

But my question is how do we get the more junior members of our team to read more?  Has anyone got any ideas about this or is that just the way things are?  Very interested to hear your comments on this topic.

 

Mark Nagurski, Derry's own Martha Lane Fox - 10 things the two Digital Champions have in common

This week Mark Nagurski started his new role as Derry’s first Digital Champion.  There’s been a lot of interest in and around the appointment and it’s become a whole lot bigger & more prestigious since Derry’s win of the UK City of Culture 2013 competition.  “Digital Champion” is a job title we’d never heard of 5 years ago but it’s becoming increasingly popular.  Other job titles of a similar ilk and in the same type of space would be Brian Halligan’s appointment as “entrepreneur in residence” at MIT or the appointment of Lloyd Davis as “social artist in residence” at the University of London’s Centre for Creative Collaboration.

Mark’s remit is to spend the next two years promoting the burgeoning creative digital sector in the North West of Ireland.

Now I realise that Martha’s job as the UK’s Digital Champion is on a much bigger scale than Mark’s but I thought it would be a bit of fun to spot some similarities between them beyond their shared job title – so here goes:

1.       They are both internet entrepreneurs and have been deeply steeped in the internet and what it means for business and society forever

2.       Neither of them studied a technology subject at university – Martha studied Ancient & Modern History at Oxford and Mark studied International Relations at the LSE

3.       They were both born in the 1970s so they’re both still “young”

4.       They’ll both talk to anyone

5.       They both write extremely well & are articulate in conversation

6.       They love starting things and are serial entrepreneurs

7.       Neither of them have sisters

8.       They are both grafters and will work their backsides off for a cause they believe in

9.       They believe in themselves and their own abilities

10.   They know what they’re talking about and command respect from their audiences and peers.

Good luck in the new role Mark.  I for one am delighted with your appointment and I can’t wait to see the success and opportunity you’ll bring to Derry and the NW in the next couple of years.

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